Mobile phones (alternately referred to as cellular or wireless phones) have been proliferated to the point that in any gathering or meeting of people today, one can predict with a reasonable degree of certainty that sometime during the meeting, a mobile phone will ring, causing some degree of disturbance, disruption, and/or aggravation. Sometimes, people are requested to turn off their phones and yet a phone still rings.
Many phones have vibration modes to indicate incoming calls. While this usually prevents the disruption caused by an audible ring, people still feel compelled to answer such calls. This means they will start talking, thereby disrupting the meeting or gathering, even if they simultaneously get up and exit the room. Also, people naturally talk relatively loudly when conversing on mobile phones, so any initiation of a call is rarely done quietly.
Currently, it is becoming more frequent to find mobile phones being banned in meetings, gatherings, and restaurants. This trend will undoubtedly continue given the ongoing reductions in the costs of mobile service and the resultant proliferation of mobile phones. Eventually, people who have a strong need to stay in contact with others for critical business communications will find their business activities suffering due to being out of touch while in meetings, gatherings, and restaurants. One option is to activate the phone to answer the call and then walk to a location suitable for talking. However, many conference rooms and certainly most restaurants and theaters are large enough that the time required to move to a proper location is too long to expect the calling party to wait without hearing some response from the receiving end. Also, the receiving party may not want the calling party to hear the background sounds that exist in the receiving party's ambient environment.
One capability that does exist (at least in some Nextel phones) is the capability to send a caller immediately to voicemail by pressing a button. This is typically used by persons who have left their phones in an audible “ring” mode (as opposed to a silent “vibrate”) and want to curtail the disturbance caused by the ringing sound. Otherwise, the only other effect of using this feature is to send the caller into voicemail after one or two rings instead of the usual four or more rings—something that makes little difference to the caller. However, if the receiving party wishes to accept the call, this feature is of little or no value.
If the situation is one where disturbing others is an issue, what typically happens is that the receiving party will answer the phone and start the conversation while they are standing up and starting to walk out of the room. They may even attempt to talk softly as they do this, but most often, the damage relative to disturbing others is already done. Besides the actions just described, the only other choice the receiving party has today is to ignore the call and let it go into voicemail.
Many times, calls are just too important to ignore. What is needed is a method that allows the person receiving the call to do so in complete silence while allowing them to exit the room in a quiet, non-rushed manner, thereby showing a maximum amount of courtesy to those in the meeting or gathering. At the same time, this needed method should not inconvenience, confuse, or aggravate the caller. Such a capability does not exist in mobile phones today.
In addition to mobile phones, a variety of digital electronic devices such as PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and even miniature notebook computers are evolving to have wireless connection capability, not only for email and Internet connectivity, but also for voice communication. This voice communication capability essentially allows such mobile communication devices to function in a similar way to a mobile phone, usually by connecting some form of wired or wireless headset to the unit. Conversely, some mobile phones are being produced that when opened, become a PDA with a larger display and QWERTY-style keyboard. Similar problems to those listed above regarding courtesy issues at gatherings apply to these combination units in a similar way. Although the descriptions in this specification refer to what is currently termed cellular, wireless, or mobile phones, it is understood that they also apply to any mobile or wireless device with voice communication capability where such courtesy issues are important or significant.
One additional and emerging capability is to use wireless technology to implement all the phones within a business office as mobile phones that act like cellular/wireless phones so that employees can be better connected. Given this trend, references in this specification to the “Service Provider” may be interpreted to be a conventional mobile/cellular service provider such as Sprint, Verizon, CellularOne, Nextel, etc., or alternately, equipment located locally within an office building or office campus, or some combination of a conventional mobile service provider and local equipment functioning in unison or collaboration.
Another problem that exists with regard to answering mobile phones occurs in those circumstances where it is not practical or desirable to have the phone (or digital communication device capable of voice communication) in close enough proximity to the user to enable the vibration ring indicator to be effective. One such circumstance arises when the phone or communication device is too large to be comfortably placed in a pocket or in a belt holster. This will happen more and more as PDAs and small computers become voice enabled. The other circumstance occurs when the user does not have a pocket in which to place the mobile phone, or does not wish to place the phone in a belt holster (or does no wear a belt) due to reasons relating to style of dress. Most often, issues relating to dress will arise for the mobile businesswoman who wears a dress or suit with no pockets and/or no belt, or where the bulge or protrusion of a phone would not integrate well with their ensemble. In all of the above circumstances, the normal phone vibration mode is useless and the user must rely on an audible ring to know when there is an incoming call. This means that important calls will be missed with the phone turned off, or that the user will be compelled to allow an audible ring in meetings, thereby disturbing others. Of course, when phones are banned in meetings, there is no choice but to miss the call unless an alternative solution is available, such as a miniature wireless remote ring indicator that vibrates.
Unfortunately, in many business meetings held in closed conference rooms, the ambient noise level is so low that any audible ring indication, unless emitted from a device inserted in the user's ear, can probably be heard by others. In fact, most mobile phones, when in vibrate-only mode, are audible to others unless they are physically damped by being pressed close to the user's body. Better solutions are needed to all these problems since it is quite probable that mobile phones and voice-capable digital computing/communication devices will be banned in most gatherings within the foreseeable future.